B) Current market environment for current account-holding banks

In this year, there were the most worsenings of current accounts in Germany since more than 15 years. Generally, account management fees, as well as fees for services regarding the current account were introduced or increased.

The background-key words are:

too low interest-environment due to political reasons

decreased income through fees at card use due to political reasons

higher auditing and documentation costs due to political reasons.

There are banks that burn money due to their current settings of free current accounts! Perhaps you have notices that some banks no longer advertise their current accounts?

The president of the savings banks was repeatedly quoted in the press that the time of free current accounts is over.

End of free current accounts? Fiddlesticks!

The DKB has not only published ads unter the slogan “Kein Aber” (no but) in the television and on YouTube during the summer, but has repositioned itself for the coming years with partially greatly improved conditions: in the future, there will be two current account models – and both are free of charge!

C) The new conditions in detail + recommendation for action

The good news: no matter how you have used your DKB account, you, being a smart bank customer, do not have to change anything. The use will be improved automatically.

Nevertheless, there will be two customer groups at the bank:

the “active customers”

and the others.

As you have already seen above, the active customers are set up a little better in their conditions. As an existing customer of the bank, you are automatically an active customer until the 30th of November 2017, no matter how often or seldom you have used the DKB until now.

As a new customer of the DKB, you will also be an active customer for the first 12 months from the account opening.

Again good news: it is super easy to be regarded by the DKB as an active customer!

How to become an active customer:

Make sure to have monthly incoming transfers of at least Euros 700.

Done. This is the only requirement according to the current state of knowledge!

These Euros 700 do not have to be transferred as a salary paymentnor in a sum!

With this comparatively low amount (Postbank: Euros 3,000), most people have an easy time to remain an active customer and therefore be in the middle column of our comparison (see above).

For you, the DKB will become even better than it is today.

However, even if you decide to not have a monthly incoming transfer of Euros 700 or more to the DKB account, the account will remain free of charge for you also in the future!

This is a very important notice for many of our readers abroad, who use the DKB as their homeland account etc. only sporadically.

Clever people will try to organize the incoming transfer anyway, in order to avoid the foreign transaction fee. I know from numerous conversations with DKB customers living abroad that this is an important point, which should not be underestimated!

Therefore, I am very thankful to the DKB for this great improvement of conditions, as well as to all readers that have supported us in our argumentation (German)

How will it continue?

As you can imagine, not every single change and introduction can be explained in detail in the first article. However, it was important to create the big overview for you to understand the future of your DKB account.

Please rate this article positively and recommend it to others, if it has helped you to gain orientation.

In the next time, further articles will be published that will show and explain the new features and service (emergency package, card insurance, DKB Live and the individual card design) in detail.

If you already use our notification service, then you will be informed in advance about further developments.

Questions?

Please ask your questions through the comments feature at the end of this page. I will gladly help, wherever I can. Furthermore, you can report about your knowledge there too.

Further frequently as positive-rated DKB articles

PS: Thrilling hours are behind me and I am glad to now click on the button “Publish” for you! Thank you 🙂

[Total: 7 Average: 4.3/5]

Who writes here?

Someone who gained experience with more than 100 banks in more than 20 countries during the past 15 years. My name is Gregor and if you click to continue you can find out why I am here and what this site is for ⇒ continue.

28 Responses to “The new DKB conditions in an overview!”

I appreciate your efforts alot for providing such simplified information.
I am planning to open a DKB Girokonto. I have a question about its credit card. It is of course very clear from your articles that with DKB credit card, extra charges on all overseas transaction, money withdrawals are free of cost/ refundable. But is it valid in case of online payment/shopping in foreign currency/country? If not, what are the charges on that?

First of all, yes, it is possible to use the credit card in foreign online shops and foreign currencies. For shops outside Europe, there is currently a fee of 1.75% of the payable amoung. But from Dec 1, 2016 onwards it will be free of this charge as well.

Very nice conditions indeed. The 50€ withdrawal limit can be overridden by using a “withdrawal” account from another bank, but I bet many banks will soon introduce some limits like N26 did. Hopefully card payments and NFC will spread more in the near future so we won’t need withdrawals anymore. Germany and the whole EU should really push on this matter, since electronic currency is the key to eradicate corruption and tax evasion.

In the article it was mentioned that to become an active user I need a monthly transfer of 700€. But in the case of freelancers that don’t have a monthly income and get paid more exporadicaly, would they take the total deposited into account?

For example, if in one month someone deposit 2100€ would it count towards 3 months of active user?

As far as we currently know, DKB calculates the status “Aktivkunde” (active customer) per quarter. If the answer to the question: „In the recent quarter, have there been 2,100 Euro or more coming in on the account?” is “Yes”, then the account remains on active status.

It does not matter, if the money comes in in three portions (i.e. monthly), in one amount or in 20 separate transfers. It is only important, that there have been 2,100 Euro coming in per quarter.

Yes, that’s right. The withdrawal amount is converted into Euro – is it below 50 Euro, a disbursement is not possible. You’ll then have to choose a higher amount.

Please take into account that this regulation has been established to prevent the many mini withdrawals. The withdrawal of cash does cost the DKB quite a bit of money, since they take care of the charges. In Germany, that‘s 1.75 Euro per withdrawal!

Other banks have limited the number of withdrawals or charge a fee for them. Here, DKB has found a good way to expediently maintain the free cash withdrawals worldwide for us smart banking customers.

Please only apply for the account, after having arrived in Germany and when you have a German address. Please consider though, that due to a lacking credit history in Germany you might not get a good score from the credit check, in order to obtain a real credit card.

Is it possible to stop overdraft facility and make it zero temporarily? If yes then will the transactions be immediately deducted from checking account based on available amount of money in your account instead of waiting for 20th of the month (just like debit card)?

Thanks for the reply. Well other options are also good but new conditions of DKB (no foreign currency payment fee and withdraw) has made it even more tempting which I can’t seem to find in any other bank.

Hi,
Can I open account on DKB or other German banks? I am citizen of Singapore. I often want to buy products from Germany from my country in euro as I had a euro account in UK bank.
I will be able fly in Munich and German Post Office to proof my identify. Will that be possible?

The DKB Visa Card and generally the DKB account are always free of charge. But the bank rewards active customers with even better conditions – see above. You are considered “active”, if you have monthly incoming money of 700 Euro or more. What happens to the money afterwards, does not matter in this context.

This is indeed a superb website. Let me report, or also ask you for advise about something that is not working for me as expected based on this article.
I open my account at DKB early this year, around March I believe, maybe February.

The thing is that I am, based on your explanation, an active customer. Nevertheless, when paying with my CC abroad. (actually, when using it to buy inline in a website from the US) I haven been charged 1.75% for transaction abroad.

Please use the search feature on the right hand upper side of our specialty portal (or simply above when you are using this site mobile). This way, you can use/access the information of all our available articles the quickest. Many thanks for the acknowledgement!

DKB does have such cards, but those are not the bank’s strongest feature 😉

I forgot to transfer 700 EUR to my DKB account before the end of the month (money came only on 3 December) and I lost my active client status 🙁 Now trying to understand if 1.75% fee applies to payments made INside Euro area or only for payments OUTside Euro area. This is critical for me as I did quite a big payment from my DKB Visa last week and one big is upcoming this week. Please help!

Dear Richard, sorry I was not specific enough. All my payments are in euros, so no any foreign exchange is involved. So I am wondering if payment fee of 1.75% applies for non-active customers in case euro payments made outside Germany but inside eurozone. My problem is that I do not speak German. So when they say “Ausland” in the rules I am not sure whether this applies to all foreign countries or only those outside euro area. I see that in the above article it is said fee applies only to payments outside euro area. However, I wanted to check against info on the bank’s webpage here: https://www.dkb.de/info/weltweit_kostenlos/ to make sure I will not incur additional charge for my payments. Yes, I made a mistake with forgetting to transfer money. But I guess it can happen everybody.